Berlin 2

 The non-soccer highlight of the trip was the walking tour we took on Saturday night, another one of the parent chaperones is a teacher and he took on the role of tour guide. We saw many impressive buildings on the walk but they aren’t what I will remember the most.

One of the things Leanne said she remembered about Berlin from her first visit 13 years ago were all the cranes, Berlin is still a city under construction which makes it an intriguing combination of old and new. Alexanderplatz was where our walk began and it feels very new and modern, and is at the base of the Berlin radio tower that served as a point of reference to help us figure out where we were. After the tower, which has a rotating visitor platform and restaurant, we stopped to visit Marx and Engels. Though communism has left Germany, Marx and Engels remain as a reminder and a draw for tourists who clamour to sit in Marx’s’ lap.

Further down the street we came to the Brandenburg gate, I’ll let Wikipedia do the work: The Brandenburg Gate (German: Brandenburger Tor) is a former city gate, rebuilt in the late 18th century as a neoclassical triumphal arch, and now one of the most well-known landmarks of Germany. 

As the tour progressed I became appreciative of the fact that we were seeing it all at night, different lighting makes for a different experience and a night viewing felt right, especially as we came to the Holocaust Memorial. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is a 4.7acre expanse of concrete slabs arranged on a sloping field, the shadows at night gave it a haunted feel and there was something very powerful in the simplicity, perhaps owing to the scope of the field.

Beyond the walking tour we also toured around a lot looking for soccer games, they never seemed to be where they were supposed to be. Owing to the fact that we were the largest group of non-players, being two parents and a younger brother, we were assigned to the public transit team for the games on Saturday and Sunday. This was okay as we got to see parts of the city we wouldn’t otherwise have seen and there is something about the Berlin trains that made me feel like I was in a movie. Each time I saw one I got the feeling that I was in a futuristic story, one where peace is new and people are wildly expressing themselves in their new found freedom, and the city is under constant rebuilding. Perhaps such a movie was made and filmed in Berlin and I just don’t remember the name, maybe it is a combination of different stories, or maybe it is the mix of new and old, the abandoned buildings with smashed windows, the ultramodern seemingly constructed of glass, and the cranes; whatever it was it gave me the feeling that I was in a story that was not my own. Maybe it was the tricksters.